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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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To clarify I don't have a problem with vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives. It's just a critique of what looks to me to be a blindspot. Similar to how early internet Atheism, looked at as a group of people, started expressing itself as an entity. Sure, they weren't advertised as a group of slightly autistic white teenage boys. But a lot of the expression of the group was dictated heavily by the fact that a lot of them were. Same for Libertarianism. It's mostly just white dudes.

As for Hoppe, his objection did not pertain to murderers and the like. It pertained to people who disrupted social normalcy as seen by those who connect together in a social covenant. If the covenant doesn't like homosexuals, drug users and jews, those could all be physically removed by the covenant and it would be completely Libertarian to do so.

Some of us are true believers. I want you to do whatever you want. Just don't violate me or mine.

I think the meat of the disagreement lies somewhere in the paragraph you wrote here, so let me try teasing something out.

If I set up a Discord server where I sell estrogen to consenting persons whose age I can't exactly verify, and I accept monetary and sexual favors as payment, and enforce a social hierarchy within the Discord server that functionally facilitates predation on people curios about this sort of thing, and I owe my entire existence to people under 15 consuming pornography at a great rate, that's just fine? Like, if your son comes in my discord server, pays me with sexual favors and starts consuming estrogen I sell him, rendering him sterile and depressed, but he also has permanent rectal damage after falling to peer pressure and posting videos of himself inserting large plastic items into his anus, then someone leaks the videos your son put up on the discord server, which was technically public, and your son later kills himself... Did I violate your son?

Because I didn't ask him to join the server. He got that idea from reading comments on a porn site.

As a parent, what was your course of action regarding your son? Given you don't control the internet, and you believe you should not exercise control over the internet to stifle what others can and can't see. Completely ban the internet in your house? That limits your freedom quite a bit. Try to block 'pr0n' and hope there aren't actors who want to guide your son towards watching it past the block?

My point would be that my discord server inherently infringes on your right to exist in a nice and healthy way. You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

If I set up a Discord server where I sell estrogen to consenting persons whose age I can't exactly verify, and I accept monetary and sexual favors as payment, and enforce a social hierarchy within the Discord server that functionally facilitates predation on people curios about this sort of thing, and I owe my entire existence to people under 15 consuming pornography at a great rate, that's just fine? Like, if your son comes in my discord server, pays me with sexual favors and starts consuming estrogen I sell him, rendering him sterile and depressed, but he also has permanent rectal damage after falling to peer pressure and posting videos of himself inserting large plastic items into his anus, then someone leaks the videos your son put up on the discord server, which was technically public, and your son later kills himself... Did I violate your son?

Because I didn't ask him to join the server. He got that idea from reading comments on a porn site.

As a parent, what was your course of action regarding your son? Given you don't control the internet, and you believe you should not exercise control over the internet to stifle what others can and can't see. Completely ban the internet in your house? That limits your freedom quite a bit. Try to block 'pr0n' and hope there aren't actors who want to guide your son towards watching it past the block?

My point would be that my discord server inherently infringes on your right to exist in a nice and healthy way. You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

In that scenario I failed my hypothetical son, not you. And if he was 14 or 15 he also failed himself to some extent. As a parent I see my job as to raise functioning adults that can navigate adult society. That means they need some ability to make decisions on their own, assess dangers on their own, and when they fail in minor ways I am to be there as a support structure for them to fall back on.

You made your scenario about sexual deviancy, and something that is on the verge of being illegal. But there are plenty of fully legal and pernicious traps in society that do not involve sexual deviancy. Drinking is a problem, sugar and obesity are problems, there are MLM and pyramid schemes that can suck people in, cults, etc. I cannot burn a path through the world and eliminate every possible danger for my kids. My only option, without engaging in a strange war against modern society, is to give my child the tools to protect themselves.

If all my children become dead and destroyed by this world, then I will wage war. But it won't be because of any high minded principles, I'll just be a broken man bent on revenge.

You should not have to live like the Amish just to avoid sexual deviants and freaks.

And you don’t. Fundamentalists mostly live in the same world as everyone else, and they don’t worry about their kids being groomed into being a freak by weirdos.

Huh? They absolutely do worry about this and frequently protest about the idea that this could even start happening. They impose a lot of harsh restrictions on their kids precisely to minimise the chances of them being groomed into freaks by weirdos, and they're not exactly quiet about it. Hell, a lot of opposition to drag queen story hours does in fact come from the fundamentalists.

And you don’t. Fundamentalists mostly live in the same world as everyone else, and they don’t worry about their kids being groomed into being a freak by weirdos.

Fundamentalists definately worry about this. Given how the Trans issue has gone, it seems a lot of other people worry about it as well.